You know your doing something wrong when your multi-level marketing campaign annoys multi-level marketers. Ty Tribble over at the MLM Blog posted about the amount of spam being sent out on behalf of the BlastOff Network. Here is a quote:
“The Blastoff Network and their reps are using spam to get this particular rocket off the launch pad. Blast Off is expected to grow faster than Facebook? The only people who expect that are the ones who are spamming.”
He also quotes someone that says each instance of this spam is subject to an $11k fine. I don’t believe the CAN-SPAM act covers Facebook status updates (unless of course you are phishing from someone else’s accounts), but this phenomenon is causing people to temporarily and even permanently hide updates from their friends on Facebook.
In addition, BlastOff seems to be have already been flagged by enough people to be added to various e-mail blacklists. The scrupulous team has suggested to it’s members that they use their own e-mail addresses to bypass this problem, thus causing personal e-mails to get flagged as spam. A customer quote:
“Perhaps so, but after using the blastoff emailer, Hotmail now considers my email address as SPAM and blocks even normal mail to my hotmail contacts.”
The obvious fix to this compounded problem?
“You may have to establish an alternate email address for awhile. Yahoo allows an extra email address, as well as disposable email addresses. Gmail account is free.”
If their goal it to blacklist everyone on the Internet, they are off to a good start.
Not bird nor plane nor even frog, it’s just little old me, SpammerDog.
Ironic, considering the initial launch was delayed while they were ensuring spam compliance:
Since the bad news the night before last night, we’ve only gotten one other hint about the launch, on an internal PPL page :
Blastoff is currently working night and day to communicate with the main webmail services across the US to make them aware of the email volume to come, and keep all Blastoff members using the invitation service provided SPAM compliant. Blastoff needs a little more time to secure this effort. Due to this, we are postponing the launch.We know you are anxious to hit the ground running (and so are we, and so is Blastoff) but we want to take the appropriate precautions for lasting success – which includes remaining SPAM compliant.
What this means for you is that Blastoff will NOT launch on Monday. They simply need more time. We anticipate being able to announce a new launch date very soon and don’t expect the launch to be more than a week away. We will post more information on this website as it becomes available.
We realize this announcement may be discouraging for some, but rest assured that while this delay was not anticipated or desired by anyone at Pre-Paid Legal or Blastoff, we both believe it’s the best course of action to ensure the compliance necessary to continue doing business into the future.
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/blastoff-basics/887fb1b7a797c73b477de6a6d2dcb68b
No whitelisting for us or simple spam avoidance advice to our members- we’re at a dinner meeting with all of the e-mail honchos at Pizza Hut as we speak.
But they must have had too many beers since it happened anyway: (the excuse begins at 1:11: (Video Blog update 10-31-09)
http://blastoffnetwork.com/?page_id=748
There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!